Poets House invites audiences to journey around the world with the International Writing Program (IWP), the nation’s unique conduit for the world’s literatures. Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, (Somalia/Italy), Maung Day, (Myanmar), and Vladimir Martinovski, (Macedonia), together with alumnae Anne Kennedy (New Zealand) and Natasha Tiniacos, (Venezuela), join IWP in celebrating its 50th year in an evening of readings and conversation about poetry around the globe.

Poet and essayist Cheryl Clarke discusses the poetics and politics of Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African-American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Reading from Brooks’ early and late poetry, Clarke examines Brooks’ contributions to a radical black practice of poetry and her representations of the black working class in A Street in Bronzeville and The Near-Johannesburg Boy.

First published in 1968, Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Oceania is one of poetry’s germinal texts, educating generations of writers and readers to the multiple possibilities for poetry throughout the world. Fifty years later, Technicians of the Sacred still delights readers with its ability to excite discovery and expand the notion of the genre.

Mary Jo Bang will discuss her new book A Doll for Throwing, for which she invented a ventriloquized persona that incorporates historical figures from the Bauhaus movement (among them, Lucia Moholy and László Moholy-Nagy), personal interiority, biography, and sheer invention. She will also describe her use of artworks and other material as the basis for imagined stage sets, from which speakers address aspects of the world from which they were drawn and urgent issues of the present.

Poet Pattie McCarthy, known for re-visioning historical texts, joins living legend and 2017 Robert Frost Medal recipient Susan Howe on the occasion of her 80th birthday for an evening of readings and conversation. Howe is the author of multiple poetry collections, including That This, The Midnight, Kidnapped, The Europe of Trusts, and, most recently, Debths. Celebrated for her historical eye and innovative verse, Howe remains one of the preeminent voices of her generation.

Between August 29th and September 3rd, poet Donna Masini will be in Prismatic Park inviting you to write “postcard poems,” create a collaborative “Chain of Imagination,” participate in poetry readings, celebrate Labor Day.

Here are descriptions of what you can expect—but, above all, expect the unexpected:(Check schedule below for exact times)